


Memories and Mind-Melds

by AlyssiaInWonderland



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt Jim, Hurt/Comfort, Jim is not okay, M/M, Memories, Mind Meld, Protective Spock, Spock wants to help, Tarsus IV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 12:28:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10571328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlyssiaInWonderland/pseuds/AlyssiaInWonderland
Summary: Jim's strongest memories - the five times he knew it wasn't going to be okay. And something new - the time he realised it would be.Five of Jim's worst moments, and a lot of angst, and a lot of comfort!





	

**1 - Father**

Jim disliked the importance placed on a person’s first memory. It was often said that your first memory informed the person that you become, and he hated this idea with a vehemence that sometimes confused even him. He wasn’t sure exactly how old he was; perhaps five at most. He had been told to draw his family, and he had dutifully drawn his mother, his brother Sam, and himself. He had presented it to his teacher with a brilliant, triumphant smile, only to be faced with a weak affirmation and eyes shining with tears.

Unsettled, wondering what about his picture had hurt his teacher, he took it home, and showed it to his mother.  
  
“Well done, darling.” She said, but when Jim looked up she too had tears in her eyes.  
  
“What did I do wrong?”  
  
“Why do you think that you did something wrong, Jimmy?”  
  
“My drawing made the adults cry.” He stated, matter of fact and hiding behind the impersonality of the statement.  
  
“Oh sweetie, it’s just because I miss your father. I-“ she broke off, tears spilling from her eyes and onto the paper. Jim reached up, trying to wipe them away.  
  
“It’s going to be okay.” He said, remembering the phrase from somewhere. His hand was placed protectively on his mother’s shoulder, his blue eyes shining with determination and fierce love. Winona was sucker-punched by just how alike her youngest son was to George, and she pulled away, ashamed.  
  
The drawing fell to the floor, and she moved to the table, pouring out a glass of wine like it was medicine for the ache in her heart. Jim watched her attention slip away from him, evasive as ever, and he realised that she didn’t see his drawing at all, just the glaring empty space where his father should have been.

He left the drawing where it fell. He found solace in dragging Sam out of the house and lying with him on the grass, staring up at the stars. As he held Sam’s hand, tight enough to make his fingers sting, he knew that no matter how hard he tried, they couldn’t fill the gap their father had left when he died. Despite what he had said, it wasn’t going to be okay.

2 - Tarsus

Jim usually tried to forget the time when he had been JT. Tarsus IV was infamous, written about in textbooks and decried as horrific, and yet to those who had not been there it was just a set of discomfiting numbers. JT had been one of those numbers – one of the supposedly lucky ones. He had survived Tarsus. He still wasn’t sure if he had survived Kodos. Despite all his efforts, Kodos haunted him in his all too regular nightmares, and when it was particularly bad, he would wake up thinking he was still on Tarsus, still trapped in that desperate hunger. The turning point for him hadn’t been when he was separated from the adults, or when he had helped Sam grab some of the younger kids and run. Even when he was struggling to pick up the small sack of rice that would feed his small band of runaways, he was relentlessly optimistic. He cooked rice porridge in dirty water and smothered the smoke, kept up a smile brighter than the small sun on Tarsus.

He had been climbing up the storage silo to collect more rice when he met Kodos. His concentration consumed by his weak grip on the ladder, he only noticed the man when his voice cracked like a whip.  
“What are you doing, child?”  
  
JT felt a hand grabbing his arm harshly, bruising it as he was dragged from the ladder despite his clinging fingers. He sprawled in the dirt, the bag of rice spilling into the mud. Tears stung his eyes at the waste, though Kodos attributed the tears differently.  
  
“Stealing? You should be crying of shame. You’re one of the runaways, aren’t you?” Kodos grabbed JT’s chin roughly, his anger halting in the face of blue eyes and hope. “What do you hope to achieve by taking the food rightfully belonging to your betters?”  
  
“They’re not my betters!” JT spat out the words, because if Jim was reckless, JT was fearless in his desperation. He was slapped back to the ground, and JT could taste the metallic mixing of blood with the mud. JT pushed himself up again, reaching for the sack, and Kodos grabbed his wrist. He prepared to hit the ground, but the blow never came. Instead, the man’s hand touched his cheek lightly, and JT refused to flinch, meeting Kodos’ eyes and wishing he hadn’t.  
  
“You are still not broken.” It was a statement, but it was packed with a strange combination of hatred and reverence. “Perhaps your genetics were not as inferior as the scanners thought.” JT fixed his gaze over Kodos’ shoulder, determined to make no movements that betrayed his fear. Kodos’ fingers roughly scraped against his lips, and this made JT finally drop the bag of rice again. A sudden energy seemed to strike Kodos. “You are superfluous. I will break you!” Kodos’ voice rose, in that terrifying oxymoron of hatred and desire, and JT wanted desperately to run, to leave his arm behind in Kodos’ grasp and be back in the relative safely of his small camp.  
  
Instead, he tried to bargain.  
  
“I won’t break-“ he began, and tensed his muscles, turning his head with the slap and resolutely meeting Kodos’ eyes. “But if you give me the rice, I will bend.”  
  
The words were sticking in his throat, but it was enough for Kodos. JT wanted to hold the rice to ground him, but Kodos took it in his hand, out of JT’s reach as he took what he wanted and JT refused to show any emotion. When it was over, Kodos held the bag of rice above him, and smiled.  
  
“Have your rice.” He poured it to the dirt, throwing JT the bag. “If you can pick it all up, it’s yours.”  
  
JT ignored his tattered emotions, scrabbling the rice together and retreating painfully, letting the tears fall once his back was turned.  
  
“You’ll be back.” Kodos called after him, and that was when JT broke. Because it was true. His band survived on the rice, and JT learned that Kodos liked it when he cried, and that nobody was going to save him.

3 - Frank

When Sam ran away, Jim was torn between relief that at least one of them had a chance at a normal life, and a vicious, bitter anger. He had pushed for Sam to run, knowing that his brother had taken so many of the beatings Frank had passed out like candy. Jim remembered enough of being JT to know that he was better at handling such things than Sam, so he had shouted and rejected and stirred trouble until Sam had little choice.  
  
That night, Frank was drunk and livid with his impotence, his ability to control Sam stripped from him. Jim could never escape for long, bruises growing on his ribs and face and thighs all the faster for the lack of Sam’s interception. Frank always called him James. Perhaps Jim was too tender, or perhaps he wanted to make sure that Jim wouldn’t flinch when he was called around Winona. Not that his mother was home often, if ever. Once Frank passed out in his alcoholic stupor, Jim considered taking a knife, ending it forever – whichever of them ended up dead, it would stop the pain.  
  
Instead he stepped outside, letting his stinging skin feel the cold air of dawn, and slid into his father’s car. It was the work of a moment to bypass the keys, and he revved out of the driveway with a feeling of freedom bubbling in his chest that he liked to imagine Sam had felt too. When he was out of sight of the farm, he pressed play, listening to his father’s old music, resentment slowly pooling with the pain from the hits. The road was almost deserted, and he thought for a moment about calling the authorities. But before he could, he heard the sound of a siren, and realised his role was set. He laughed, bitterness catching the edge of the sound as he speeded past the small, stunned figure by the roadside towards the cliff of a quarry. He almost didn’t jump.  
  
He ended up clinging to the edge of the cliff, and the relief he felt to be back on solid ground made the arrest even harder to bear. Still, he hoped they might think to wonder why he had stolen the car. But his jump had provided Frank a cover, and it was so much easier to believe that Jim was lashing out after Tarsus than that the husband of a high-ranking Starfleet officer was abusive. Frank’s hand closed over Jim’s shoulder as they walked to the car taking them back to the farm.  
  
Once the cameras were gone, Frank promised that he would suffer for every second until he managed to escape. Frank was a man of his word. Jim was gone by the time he turned sixteen.

4 - Vulcan

Jim liked the devil-may-care front he adopted at the academy. He was, cautiously, proud that he would do his best to help people, even if one of those people stranded him on an ice planet called Delta Vega. Neither of those things helped him particularly as he ran from the enormous, hairy creature that clearly liked the principle of eating a Starfleet cadet.  
  
The rescue had come as a surprise, his rescuer even more so. He could feel the pain from this version of Spock even before the meld, and afterwards Jim wasn’t sure he could feel anything other than the burning regret and loss, couldn’t see anything except the entire planet vanishing.  
  
“Emotional transference is an effect of the mind-meld.”  
  
“So you do feel.” Jim struggled for breath under the weight of it.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
They worked well together, this Spock and he. It felt like an echo. Until he quoted regulation 619.  
  
“So you’re saying that I have to emotionally compromise you.”  
  
“Jim. I just lost my planet. I can tell you, I am emotionally compromised. What you must do is get me to show it.”  
  
Jim wanted to swear at this Spock, curse him and his promise of friendship. Jim fought the desire, fought the irrational jealousy for his counterpart’s upbringing and the crushing realisation that this friendship could never happen in this world. To save everyone, he had to break Spock, his Spock. He let himself be ushered to the transporter.  
  
“Coming back in time, changing history. It’s cheating.” Jim said.  
  
“It’s a trick I learned, from an old friend.”  
  
Hopefully, giving up the friendship they could have had would be worth it. He might be able to save Earth, even if Vulcan was gone.  
  
“Live long, and prosper.”

5 - Death

Jim could feel the ship recovering, the warp core realigned. It was going to be okay – but not for him.  
  
He could feel himself weakening, and by the time he reached the glass, could see Scotty, he knew it was too late. His awareness slipped in and out, and suddenly Spock was there, and he reached out, desperate to feel some form of warmth before he died. The fear was almost overwhelming him now. He didn’t have the energy left to drive his relentless optimism, and his façade of bravery was crumpled to the floor with his body.  
  
“How do you choose not to feel?” he asked Spock, almost hating the vulnerability in his voice.  
  
“I do not know.” He was struggling to see, but he thought he could see a tear on the Vulcan’s usually calm face. “Right now, I am failing.”  
  
“You know why I couldn’t let you die?” Jim was taken by the sudden urge to communicate that he cared, to confirm he had felt something, had any impact other than pain.  
  
“Because you are my friend.”  
  
Jim supposed that there were worse ways to die than touching through glass to a confession of love.

+1 - Spock

Spock released the mind-meld gently, trying to project emotions of care and gentleness to Jim.  
  
“I’m sorry.” Jim flinched away from Spock’s kindness, from the unshed tears in his dark eyes. “I should just- I should go, I know I’m messed up-“  
  
“Jim.” Spock’s voice was laced with emotion that he didn’t bother to conceal, and it was this more than anything else that made Jim pause in his retreat. “I am…honoured that you trust me enough to show me those memories.”  
  
“So you don’t hate me?” Jim hated the childishness of the words, wanted to run, but Spock’s hand soft on his shoulder anchored him.  
  
“I could never hate you, thyla. Least of all for this.” Spock left his posture open, sliding his arm around Jim without pressing him into a hug. Jim slowly moved into his arms, and he cradled his boyfriend with all the tenderness he possessed.  
  
“How can you still love me?” Jim cursed the tears and his inability to let go of the comfort of Spock’s warmth. “All those times, I just gave up, I accepted, I fought and pretended not to believe in no-win scenarios but all the time, I was lying.”  
  
“Jim, that isn’t weakness. That is strength. You went through so much and kept going, even when you thought there was nothing left. You fought for others over yourself, you still do. You are the bravest, most selfless man I have ever known, and your experiences and past only serves to illustrate that more deeply. Everything about you is the man I am in love with, Jim. I cannot lie; I hate that you had to suffer so much. But I do not, cannot, hate you.”  
  
Jim couldn’t reply, but hugged Spock tighter, sparing a thought to be grateful that Vulcans were sturdier than humans, or Spock might have been unable to breathe under the fierce grip.  
  
“I would help you. Any way I can.” Spock whispered. Jim did not move, letting tears fall faster, and Spock did not complain that the salt water was soaking his uniform.  
  
“I’m not okay, Spock.” Jim whispered. The words felt like a confession.  
  
“I’m here.”  
  
Spock held Jim until his tears ran out and his body was fully supported by the Vulcan’s arms. He gently carried the exhausted Jim to an armchair, pressing a kiss to his forehead and setting up a chess board on the table. Spock sat in the seat opposite, a calm presence emanating affection and care. Jim began to play, wordlessly, feeling the hollow left by his tears slowly fill with something else, something familiar but previously always fleeting.  
  
At some point, Spock had procured a glass of water to help him rehydrate, and Jim sipped it, snacking from a small plate of almonds, grateful for this silent, steady form of support. Spock was watching him, and watching the game, and Jim felt himself fall in love a little more at the acceptance and care Spock was displaying. The emptiness had gone entirely, and while he wasn’t magically perfect, he could feel a spark of hope in his chest for the first time. He reached out and intercepted Spock’s hand as he reached for a piece, making him gasp in pleased surprise.  
  
“Jim.” His name ghosted out of Spock’s lips, and Jim could feel his face twisting into a small, scared smile.  
  
“I’m not okay yet.” He said, quietly. “But I think that I’m going to be.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Star Trek fic. I haven't posted much yet. Any feedback and kudos and comments would be massively appreciated! Feed me! I am a newbie! XD
> 
> This was born of me deciding that Jim really, really needs a hug and yeah. It just kinda happened.


End file.
